Upsidonia Part 10

"Don't know their name!" exclaimed Mr. Hobbs in a withering tone.

"That's a nice thing to acknowledge! What is your brain for unless you learn the names of things? The big white rose is a Frau Karl Druschki, and don't you forget it. But you are a good girl to come and tell me about the weed. What weed was it now?"

"It was a dandelion," said Mollie promptly.

But as we went away she confided to me that she only _hoped_ it was a dandelion.[16] "I don't know anything about flowers," she said, "and don't want to. I shan't have to bother about all that sort of thing until I get older, and have to have a garden of my own."

"Haven't you got a garden of your own?" I asked her.

She looked at me with eyes full of surprise. "Why, I'm only twelve," she said.

Something in her expression, and the memory of Miriam's look when I had mentioned the garden, warned me not to pursue the subject. There was some mystery here--it would almost seem some mystery of s.e.x. I must reserve my enquiries for Edward.

We came to a large pool in the lower part of the garden. It was bordered with irises and reeds and other water-loving plants.

"I say!" exclaimed Mollie, "would you like to fish?"

I thought the suggestion a good one. I wanted to get some information out of Mollie, and I could not expect a child of her age to sit down in a chair and talk, even if the servants should permit us to do so undisturbed.

"I'll go and ask Sir Herbert to get us some worms and rods," she said, and ran off on her active black-stockinged legs.

She came back presently with the under-gardener, who carried a couple of rods and a tin of bait, and looked at me a little suspiciously as he said: "Now, Mollie, if you catch anything, you've got to eat it. There's to be no throwing back of fish into the pond."

Mollie promised that we would eat anything that we might catch, and Sir Herbert went back to his work.

When we were fairly settled, watching our floats, I said: "This is rather jolly, isn't it? Do your cousins, who are poor, have such a good time as you do?"

"Oh, much better," she replied. "They can go and fish in the parks if they want to, with their schoolfellows. I wish mother would let me go to school. Tom does, and I don't see why I shouldn't."

"But you can have your friends to play with you here, can't you?"

"I do sometimes. But they are not allowed to come very often; their mothers don't like it."

"Why not?"

"Oh, they think they might get to like _luxury_!"

She said this with an air of scorn, such as children use towards ideas of their elders which strike them as absurd.

"But they don't get to like luxury," I hazarded.

"As if they would! Fancy liking to be always changing your clothes, and having to keep them clean![17] Why, they tease me about it, and offer to take away my toys!"

"Take away your toys!"

"Just as if I were really the child of rich parents, and they had to be _charitable_ to me!"

"But don't you like having toys of your own, Mollie?"

"Not too many of them. Think of the rich little children whose nurses make them play with hundreds of dolls, when they only want to play with one! and are always telling them how sad the doll-makers would be if they saw them crying at having to play with the dolls they had taken such pains to make!"

She said this in imitation of a nurse's rebuke, of which she had evidently had experience.

"But I'm sure little girls like to have something of their very own," I said. "And they like new toys sometimes."

"Perhaps they may when they are very young. But they soon get tired of it when they know what it means. Why, Cynthia,[18] my cousin, once said that she would like to be rich, and have as many toys as she wanted, and her mother simply filled the house with expensive toys, and she had to play with them all. By the time she had worn them out she was jolly glad to get back to her old wooden doll, which she could dress just as she liked, and always take to bed with her. She was very careful not to say anything more about wanting to be rich after that."

So that was the system! Children were shown the satiety that comes from wealth, and taught early to shun it.

"It's such a bore having to be charitable," Mollie went on to confide in me. "When I go visiting with mother I always have to bring home something that some rich child or other has got tired of. Still, if it pleases them----! Oh, look! I've got a bite!"

But it was only a nibble.

I tried again. "Have you got a pony?" I asked.

"Yes; he's a dapple-grey; his name is Bobby. I will show him to you."

"Thank you. I like looking at ponies. I suppose your cousins haven't got ponies to ride."

"They can ride in butchers' and bakers' carts. That's much more fun.

Besides, they have ponies in the parks for poor children.

"Of course I love Bobby," she went on, as I digested this piece of information. "But it is rather hard not to be allowed to ride the park ponies, or to go and play in the parks at all, just because you have a garden and a pony of your own."

"Oh, you are not allowed to go into the parks?"[19]

"Not unless I go to tea with somebody. I do wish mother and father would leave off pretending to be rich."

"Then you would have to leave this pretty house and garden and go and live in a street."

"I should like that. There would be lots of other girls and boys to play with. I say, what time is it?"

When I looked at my watch and told her it was ten minutes past five, she jumped up in consternation, and exclaimed: "Oh, come along quickly. I didn't know it was five yet."

We hurried up through the garden, and met Mr. Hobbs, who stopped us, and said severely: "Didn't you hear the clock strike?"

"No," said Mollie. "We were busy talking. I'm so sorry, Mr. Hobbs, I won't be late again."

"You said that yesterday," said Mr. Hobbs. "And last week I caught you out here when it was nearly six. The next time it happens I'll give you a great big box of chocolate creams, and see that you eat them all."

The explanation of this awful threat, as I learnt later, was that the gardens of the rich were given up to those who looked after them, and their friends, after certain hours, and it was not permitted to their owners to enter them.

As we went across the lawn, Sir Herbert was stringing up the tennis net, and two of the maids were standing talking to him. All three of them looked at us with displeasure as we scuttled by, and Mollie said: "I shall catch it for this when I get in."

FOOTNOTES:

[15] He said that he didn't like playing with girls.

[16] It was a plantain.